In this distaff history of the Civil War, Carol Berkin focuses on three women who left behind sufficient records to allow their voices to be heard clearly. Angelina Grimké Weld renounced the values of her Southern family's way of life and embraced the antislavery movement, but found her voice appropriated by marriage to fellow reformer Theodore Weld. Varina Howell Davis, ill-suited for her role as First Lady of the Confederacy, had an independent mind and spirit and incurred the disapproval of Jefferson Davis when she would not behave as an obedient wife. And Julia Dent Grant left her slaveholding family to marry career soldier Ulysses S. Grant, suffering years of privation and separation before living in the White House. Throughout, Berkin captures the tensions and animosities of the antebellum era and the disruptions, anxieties, and dislocations generated by the war and its aftermath.

"This finely nuanced, absorbing account makes an important contribution to both Civil War literature and the history of American women."—Booklist (starred review)